


Champion's Reward

by haganenoheichou



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha!Shiro, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Champion!Shiro, Galra!Keith, M/M, Mating, Omega!Keith, Omegaverse, Sex, Violence, dubcon, nonconsensual surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12626469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haganenoheichou/pseuds/haganenoheichou
Summary: Zarkon may be a ruthless tyrant to his people and the rest of the universe, but he also appreciates a good fight. This is why when he sees Shiro, the new reigning Champion of the galactic arena, fight and win despite missing an arm, he decides to give him three things.When Shiro wakes up with a new arm and a strange new proclivity for aggression, he has no idea what fate has in store for him. And when Emperor Zarkon forces another gift onto him, a terrified Galra-human hybrid inches away from going into full-blown heat, he really, really has no idea.





	Champion's Reward

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I can't believe this is finally it! Here it is, my piece for the [Shiro Big Bang!](http://voltronbigbang.tumblr.com) This has been quite the rollercoaster ride, but I sincerely hope that you guys enjoy this fic of mine, as well as the wonderful artwork provided by the artists I had the privilege of working with, [tough-girl-freed](http://tough-girl-freed.tumblr.com/post/167122795899/healing-wounds-my-main-contribution-and-an) and [horriblecatpun](https://horriblecatpun.tumblr.com/post/167124037354/hey-everyone-real-soon-after-but-i-have-some-more)!

Screams. Darkness. Flashes of bright light. Adrenaline. His legs were thrumming with nervous energy, ready to take off in a sprint. He flexed his hands into fists, testing his strength. Good, good.

_Patience yields focus._

He closed his eyes, trying to gather up whatever it was that would get him through this. Courage? No. What he did in here was anything but courageous. He was struggling to survive here, in a display of what he could call nothing short of cowardice. He was a coward.

But he was alive.

This was all that mattered.

He was pretty sure that he was the only one left alive, the only one who had managed to survive the disaster that had been the Kerberos mission. He pushed the thoughts of Matt away, far, far away from his mind. The last time he had seen the other man had been on Reaping Day; when future gladiators had been selected from the captives of the fleet.

Those happened frequently; he didn't really know how frequently, though, as time passed differently here. He had tried to measure time by the meals he was given, but those were irregular.

Well, they had been. Today, he knew he would change things. He had to stay alive.

He had to become the best in this arena.

To live.

And to escape.

* * *

It _hurt_. He would never have thought that, but it hurt to have his footing knocked out from beneath where he stood. His shins and knees hurt as he was made to kneel, his arms too as they were tied together behind his back; his nose pressed up against the cold floor of his captive's… Where was he, exactly?

“It’s awake.”

His vision swam as he tried to get a better grasp on reality. Unfamiliar darkness. Violet light. Metal. Metal everywhere. Something told him this was not the Kerberos ship. It smelled strange. Almost sterile. Almost as if nobody was actually in the room with him – but he knew there were others, as there must have been someone who had brought him here.

And someone who was currently speaking disdainfully as they pressed him, face-down, into the floor.

That someone grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up. 

What he saw was a sight he knew he would never forget. The first time he had laid eyes on an alien.

The first time when he knew he wasn't just dreaming or hallucinating because this was so real, it hurt. Really, really hurt. He knew that it was real because he could hear Matt's labored breathing by his side. He knew it was real because of the chilling realization that the senior Holt was nowhere to be found.

“What is it?” A low, rumbling voice asked.

It was the kind of voice that sent shivers down one’s spine – in a bad way.

“A human, my Emperor. This one and the rest from his vessel. All of them Earthlings.”

“Earth?” The voice sounded minutely interested.

“Beyond our realm as of this moment, Sire.”

Shiro watched in horrified fascination as the owner of the voice turned around.

“I wonder if he would even stand a chance in the arena. I suppose there is but one way to find out.”

Shiro's memory was a gaping black hole from that point up until the moment he found himself thrown into the arena. He landed harshly on his knees with a grunt of pain which was drowned out by the cacophony of noises from the stands – the audience was numerous and bloodthirsty, all eagerly waiting for the fight to begin.

His opponent turned out to be a huge… Something, which stood on two legs, its broad shoulders – or what Shiro would have guessed were its shoulders – as wide as a garage gate. The _thing_ sneered at him, spitting to the side. Where its spit landed, the arena floor appeared burnt.

Shiro got to his feet shakily and put his hands up in a sign of surrender.

“Listen!” He yelled to the _thing_ , praying it could understand him.

It paused its advance towards him, cocking his head to the side.

“Listen! We can get out of here! We can just not fight!” Shiro called out again.

The _thing_ looked at him directly, its expressionless face unwavering. Then its terrible snout stretched into a bloodthirsty smile.

The last thing Shiro knew was pain – terrible, all-consuming pain that radiated from his shoulder all the way down to the tips of his fingers.

Then, there was darkness. 

It was easier than Shiro had ever thought it to be, switching off his thoughts and ignoring the natural, human process of memory formation. After that first time, the pain became just as familiar to him as breathing. He accepted it; he allowed it to become his catalyst. That, and the tremendous amount of anger he held for those who did not want to escape this.

There were many of them – aliens, _fighter_ s like himself, those who had accepted their fate, that one day they too would die in the arena like their opponents. Those who had embraced their roles as entertainers to this sick public, and those who even thrived from the attention.

Shiro _despised_ them; this hatred of his had become a weapon. Fuel for his survival.

Even without an arm, he managed to win, over and over again; no longer naïve enough to think that he could cooperate with any of them. No, he was going to get out of this alive and find his crew members. He was going to make his way back to Earth, but not before he made sure that these foul creatures never set foot on his mother planet.

Eventually, the thrill of the fight took over, and Shiro found himself almost enjoying the carnage. His hope of getting out alive diminished as time went by – he had no idea how much of it had passed; all he knew was that he was being called to the arena more and more frequently. They barely gave him a chance to rest and recover between the fights.

He seemed to have become quite popular with these creatures. He didn't know whether that was going to be his downfall eventually; but for now, he remained confident about one thing – the more he killed, the better his standing.

It became evident in the way the guards treated him. No longer was he sent crashing to his knees every time he was walked back to his cell. He was _walked_ back now, too, not dragged. They seemed to have established some sort of strange, sadistic rapport and perhaps even a smidgeon of begrudging respect for him.

He had no idea how this screwed-up society worked. All he knew was that he had grown accustomed to glowing yellowish eyes watching his every move.

And he gave them something to watch. He had become the main attraction, the one-armed wonder from Earth that refused to go down with or without a fight. Apparently, the Galra admired such tenacity.

He lived for the fights and because of the fights. He knew now when his opponent would be a hard one to beat – whenever that happened, he only had to look up to see the Emperor watching him closely from his private seat in the stands. Zarkon had become a frequent guest – newer, stronger gladiators were sent Shiro's way, but he beat them all. It was in the ring that Shiro realized how convenient the human body was – he was either faster or stronger than a lot of the aliens he fought; even with his balance being slightly off due to the lack of an arm.

His thoughts were interrupted by another punch which nearly missed his cheekbone. With a growl, Shiro tackled his opponent to the ground, sending the rock-like creature sprawling on its back. Its seven arms and legs (Shiro had no idea which were which) flailed as he pounded it into submission with his left fist.

Grey blood spilled onto the floor of the arena as Shiro hit the creature over and over, his mind blissfully blank. Normally, or at least, in the past, he would have been appalled at himself. Ashamed to the point of not wanting to be alive anymore. But now, everything was fair game, and it was _easy_ , so so easy to give into the bloodlust that drove him to victory.

The audience cheered him on, screaming something at him in Galra. Something that probably meant to encourage him to kill.

Finally, the creature went completely still, croaking out something akin to a curse.

Its grayish blood coated his hand and the metal floor beneath his feet. He stood, wiping his hand on the creature's body.

The stands went wild. Shiro looked around to see bloodthirsty, entertained faces of the Galra, arms in the air, shouting, yelling for the Champion.

Him.

Zarkon got to his feet, and silence fell over the stands almost immediately. Shiro stood over the corpse of his opponent, panting as he looked up into the unreadable face of his benefactor and captor.

“Congratulations… Champion.”

The stands roared their felicitations, apparently pleased with the title having been officially bestowed upon him. Shiro had no idea what being a Champion meant, but he found that the violent part of him liked it very much.

He was taken away from the arena by two guards; but instead of their usual way to his cell, they went left. Shiro looked at the guards in confusion. The Galra weren’t a very talkative bunch, so his silent question went completely unanswered. He had no choice but to go with them.

They arrived at some sort of medical facility, much akin to the one where he was usually taken after his fights to get patched up. Galra medicine was far superior to what they had back on Earth, which Shiro appreciated, considering his busy fighting schedule. The room was fitted with various Galra equipment, most of which just looked like junk to Shiro. One thing he had learned about the Galra as a species was that they didn’t really do levers and buttons. Everything here was run on something else; sometimes, Shiro suspected it was pure willpower.

The Galra who had been waiting for his arrival turned around, their face unreadable. “Champion, welcome. The Emperor’s gift awaits you.”

“Gift?” Shiro repeated, frowning. Nothing that came from Zarkon could be good news. They were probably going to experiment on him in here and leave him as a brain in a jar. Or worse.

His survival instincts kicked in, but before he could make a move to attack the Galra, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head as one of his guards smashed the hilt of their dagger into his skull.

He swayed on the spot and collapsed onto the metal floor, out cold.

* * *

His head was spinning when he came to. He was lying on a cot in the middle of what looked like a cell – but it wasn’t his. It was a cell that was much larger in size, with a bookcase in one corner and what looked like a very squishy chair in another. He sat up, grunting as his balance restored itself.

Then he realized that he had used both hands to push himself up off the cot. Disbelieving, he looked down at them to see two. Two hands. Something he had thought he’d never see again. One of them his human, flesh hand. The other, made of some sort of metal which hummed with life as he looked at it.

Galra technology.

They had given him an arm for his troubles. Granted, they had first taken it away, but something about that last battle had convinced Zarkon that Shiro was worthy of a second chance. He didn’t know whether he was supposed to be flattered or terrified. He scrutinized the arm, noting the way it hummed, almost as if it were in tune with the ship on some level. He wondered whether they would try to control him, or read his mind, or even just spy on him.

His suspicious thoughts were cut short when he realized something else – the room _reeked_ of antiseptic. He winced, covering his nose with his flesh hand. He turned his head, trying to figure out the source of the stench, only to feel a pulling pain in his neck. Fuck, that hurt. It felt as though gills had opened on the sides of his neck, violently so. Panicking, he jumped off the cot and ran towards the small mirror that hung in the corner.

What he saw there was disturbing – two long, stitched up gashes on the sides of his neck, below his ears. An angry red, they seemed to be covering up some sort of bumps. He ran his flesh fingers along one of them, wincing at the pain. Applying pressure to them appeared to do something – Shiro inhaled to find that he smelled of… Musk? A strange sort of scent that made him wrinkle his nose. It smelled like very weird cologne.

The door slid open with a hiss.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Many things happened at once – all of a sudden, Shiro ended up all the way across the room, his Galra hand pressed against the throat of the intruder, his teeth bared. Another thing that happened was that the person – well, _person_ , – he had attacked, the Galra, was still.

Shiro smelled fear.

Emotions didn’t have smells normally.

“What the hell did you do to me?” He asked, and his voice, fuck, his _voice_ carried a distinct growl to it.

The Galra in his hold seemed to need a moment to regroup, and once they did, they relaxed in his hold. “How does it feel, Champion?” They asked, their yellowish eyes glinting in the semi-dark of the room.

"How does what feel?" Shiro growled, pressing his hand into the Galra's throat. The newcomer only gave him an unreadable look before pushing him away – the fight had taken a toll on Shiro's body, so he stumbled back, wincing. His back met the edge of the cot, and he grabbed onto it, briefly marveling at how easily the new hand obeyed him. He had seen people with prosthetics before – and they did not work this way. People with those had to spend months in rehabilitation and physical therapy, learning painstakingly how to use their new limbs.

Human technology had nothing on this.

"What did you do to me?" Shiro repeated, his heart hammering away in his chest. At least that part was definitely still his. It was a comforting thought, but too fleeting for him to enjoy it.

The Galra pushed off against the closed door and approached him.

"An experiment," they replied.

Shiro lifted an eyebrow, wanting to hear more – he didn't get it. Instead, he found himself pushed and strapped back down to the cot and poked and prodded as the Galra examined the results of their handiwork.

“What kind of experiment?”

“You ask too many questions, Champion,” was the only answer he got.

All he knew right now was that he had a new robotic arm which functioned better than his actual arm had; that he had a set of… _things_ implanted under his skin that made him smell like alien Old Spice, and that apparently the Galra had a penchant for human experimentation. All this stuff put together sounded like a pretty bad outcome for the sample being experimented on.

“Everything seems to be in order,” the Galra said, turning towards the door. “Make sure not to scratch your neck, or else. You may be the Champion out on the arena, but here, I am can render you as helpless as a kit.”

With that, the Galra was gone, leaving Shiro in a state of confusion.

Confusion became a sort of theme with Shiro, really. In the next several days, he realized that things had changed about him – weird things that had undergone strange changes. The first thing he noticed was the smells. There were so many of them – smells he had never noticed before. Smells _of the Galra._ Before this strange surgery, he had never actually smelled the aliens – but now, multiple, hundreds, _thousands_ of different scents accosted him every time he was allowed out of his cell.

They were all different among themselves; some sour, some sweeter, some that made him want to growl and retreat to his cell.

Growl, of all things. He was turning into a monster, and he knew it. He wasn't human anymore. The notion weighed on him, but not as much as it should have. After all, he had stopped being human when he'd made his first kill on the arena. This was just another… addition to his monstrous nature.

His cell had become a sanctuary. Nobody entered it anymore: the guards would stop at the door, and they would wait for Shiro to get up and leave. The first and only time when a guard had tried to go in uninvited resulted with Shiro sending them to the infirmary – or whatever the Galra equivalent of an infirmary was. To this day, he had no idea how that had happened. The moment he felt the guard's presence, it had felt as though someone had flipped a switch in him, causing him to lurch up off his cot and tackle the Galra down onto the floor.

Since then, he had taken to pacing. _Prowling._ Inspecting the cell for signs of intrusion after he returned to it. Making sure it was all the way he had left it. This paranoia unsettled him greatly. Did it mean that he was beginning to view this place as home? That was a terrifying thought. Perhaps it was something else. He just had no idea what.

All he knew was that he had to protect his… place of current residence.

That didn’t really work out the way he had been planning. One day after yet another grueling fight, observed by Zarkon himself, Shiro returned to his cell to find that he was no longer alone in it.

The first thing he noticed was the faint new scent – something that smelled a little like roses. Although his memory of Earth and what flowers smelled like was so dim at this point, buried beneath months of trauma, that he wasn't quite sure anymore. The scent grew stronger as he stepped closer, and the sweetness of it became more prominent, causing his body to react in ways which he did not appreciate at all.

The cause of his strange fascination with the scent was apparent. Curled up in a heap on the floor was a body. A small body, by Galra standards, all knit tightly into a quivering ball. Shiro took a step closer as the door behind him slid shut.

As soon as took that step, the form unfurled a little, revealing what was unmistakably a Galra. It was a living, breathing, very purple Galra; just a very small one. The newcomer had big, slightly fluffy ears which resembled a cat’s, and glowing yellow eyes. What distinguished them from the rest of their kind, besides their size and the black hair on their head, so unlike any other Galra Shiro had ever seen, was the unbidden fear written all over their features.

“Don’t come any closer,” they warned. Shiro stopped.

Their voice was male; a soft, low tone which would have been comforting if it hadn’t sounded so alarmed. Shiro didn’t make another move closer. He had seen how vicious the Galra could be when spooked.

“Who are you?” He asked softly. “And what is… what’s that smell?”

That _smell_ was… different. It was nothing like what he knew the Galra to smell like. It was even sweeter now, almost cloyingly so, and it was _beckoning him_. Urging him to take another step closer even though he had resolved not to.

He stared at the new Galra, eyes wide and nostrils flaring. His body was thrumming with energy. Every single muscle in his body was tense. Was he preparing for a fight? Or to flee?

Or to do something else?

Shiro didn’t know – he didn’t feel like he knew his own body anymore. Ever since the arm had been added to it; well, _that_ and the scars on his neck which seemed to be itching even more now, he had been less than somewhat in control of his faculties. 

The newcomer shifted – and with that, their scent did as well. The movement exposed their neck, and before Shiro could stop himself from inhaling, the siren call of the tantalizing smell was already on the way to his brain.

The next thing he knew, he was tackling the newcomer to the floor, his teeth bared.

* * *

“Well, we certainly did not expect such a strong reaction.”

Shiro wanted to scream at them; instead, he pushed all his emotions down lest they surface again and cause him to lose his head – the new addition to his cell was cowering in the opposite corner, their face buried in their hands.

He couldn’t believe he had just attacked the poor thing.

Yes, he could actually feel pity for it – among other things – as it had become apparent very quickly that this Galra was nothing like the ones Shiro had encountered during his time here. The small alien had not fought back – not really, their movements feeble and their strength minute, – when Shiro had thrown himself at them. It had taken all the man’s willpower to stop, not to strip the Galra bare, and to…

Fuck, Shiro was losing his mind.

“What did you do to me?” He asked, and the question came out as an aggressive growl. He recoiled from the sound of his own voice and so did the little Galra, whimpering and pressing the balls of their hands into their eyes sockets, as if they wished to erase what they had just experienced.

Shiro couldn’t blame them.

The Galra Druid who had overseen his surgery simply looked at him with an arrogant curl to their lip. It was evident that they were debating whether to allow Shiro to discover that on his own – thankfully, that dilemma was resolved when the door of his cell slid open again.

The little Galra let out another pathetic little sound when they ventured a look at who had come to visit. Again, Shiro couldn’t blame that for that either; as the Emperor of the Galra stood in the doorway, looking decidedly bored. Or perhaps, this was his usual facial expression. Shiro had not quite figured that out yet.

"Ah, the Champion is awake," Zarkon said, glancing at Shiro with near-fondness.

Bile rose in Shiro's throat, and he shrank back.

“Have you had time to enjoy your prize?”

Shiro frowned. _Prize?_

Realization hit him as his gaze traveled to the shaking form in the corner of the room. Zarkon seemed amused by his confusion, laughing lowly, the sound a raspy scratch of nails on a chalkboard.

“You are quite blessed, Champion,” he said, his yellow eyes staring Shiro down. He nodded at the Galra who had served as Shiro’s medic, and they grabbed the quivering form by their dark hair, dragging them into the light for Shiro to see and ripping off the measly little sheet that had preserved their modesty.

Fuck, they were pretty. And they were male – at least, by human standards. The creature had glowing yellow eyes, just like the rest of the Galra, but these eyes were different. They were soft. Frightened. Terrified, even. The… the _person_ was panting, hard, his body seizing with the motion.

“This, Champion, is a great honor,” Zarkon said loftily.

Shiro glanced at him incredulously, and then back at the small Galra who hung limply in his captor’s hold. “Honor?” He repeated, finding his voice.

“You are providing great entertainment for my people in the arena, and given how skilled you are at killing, I decided a reward was due.”

Shiro didn’t like where this was going.

"This is an Omega, Champion," Zarkon said. "A Galra you would rarely see outside, as they are quite the homebodies. They tend to the hearth, and they bear our kits. They are good for little else than housework and procreation, but they bring great pleasure to those who know how to handle them."

“B-but I’m not… Galra,” Shiro breathed, not finding anything else to say.

“You are Galra enough,” Zarkon said. Before Shiro could stop him, the Emperor brushed his finger over the side of Shiro’s neck pointedly. A shock went through Shiro's system, and he stepped back, baring his teeth on instinct. He didn't like being touched there – not by Zarkon, at least. He tried to ignore the fact that even this tiny touch sent pleasure streaming right down his spine and to his nether regions. He wasn't about to get turned on by Zarkon, of all things.

“You have been given a great honor – a set of Galra glands,” Zarkon said, pointing to Shiro’s neck without touching him. “For all intents and purposes, you are now an Alpha Galra in your own right. And an Alpha should have an Omega to warm his bed.”

Shiro’s head was spinning as his hands flew to his neck, feeling the small, almost undetectable lumps hidden beneath two fresh scars. Confusion and shock interchanged in his brain as he tried to make sense of the situation.

They were turning him into one of _them_. He _loathed_ it. But that explained–

“You may have noticed your demeanor changing in the past few weeks,” the Druid spoke up, bowing their head respectfully as they took over from Zarkon. “Stronger smells. More territorial, too. You have become snappy and uncooperative – more so, than usual.”

Shiro’s eyes widened.

“Did you do this to me?” He asked, his voice barely audible.

“And it worked out splendidly,” Zarkon said, nodding at the medic who pushed the Omega toward Shiro. Instinctively, Shiro caught him, only to hold him out at an arm’s length. The scent was getting to him.

“This one’s a bit of a runt, I’m afraid, but I suppose it is the best solution for someone like you,” Zarkon said, glancing at the Champion. “He’s half-human, you see. Still Omega enough to bear children, but not Galra enough to be desirable.”

And Shiro was picking up the Galra’s castoffs.  

“I don’t want him,” he said. “Please, uh… _Sire_ … Take him back."

The little Galra suddenly met his gaze, and Shiro thought he saw betrayal before his expression shuttered off completely again, the Omega sagging in his hold. 

Zarkon let out what could have been a scoff. “Nonsense. If you do not take him, he will be thrown out the airlock, Champion. You are too much of a _human_ at heart to let him die, aren’t you?”

_Fuck you and your blackmail._

Shiro bit his lip. The smaller body against him stilled, perfectly rigid as if awaiting trial.

"T-thank you," he managed to grit out. Zarkon and the medic said something else, a lot of it, but Shiro was too preoccupied with looking at the Omega, scrutinizing him. Amused chuckles were the only goodbyes that the two of them got, and the cell door whooshed closed, leaving them alone. Shiro's curiosity got the better of him, and he sniffed the air again.

“Fuck,” he breathed. The Omega looked him in the eye then, whimpering softly.

“I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with you,” Shiro told him. The alien just stared back at him.

“But I know what I _won’t_ be doing with you.”

With that, the Omega was banned to his own corner of the cell. Shiro kept his nose away from his general direction, as far as possible.

* * *

“Why won’t you touch me?”

The question startled Shiro out of his reverie, and he glanced at the Omega whose confused face stared back at him. The two of them had spent almost an entire week without looking at each other, at least not directly. Even though Shiro had been pointedly ignoring the creature, he had always been very much aware of his presence. And it seemed as though now, the Omega was finally getting fed up with being treated akin to the furniture.

“Because I am not a rapist,” Shiro said simply.

“Rapist?” The Omega repeated slowly, cocking his head to the side. Shiro sighed deeply. He supposed the alien wouldn’t know of the concept if it didn’t exist in this strange, fucked-up society. If Omegas were there simply for the purpose of breeding.

“I don’t touch those who don’t want to be touched,” he explained quietly.

A small furrow appeared between Keith’s brows. “The Emperor gave me to you for that, though.”

"You were terrified of me," Shiro murmured. "I'm not about to… force myself on you. Plus, I barely know you."

“What does that have to do with it?”

“ _What does–?_ Christ, you people are something else,” Shiro muttered, scratching the back of his head with his Galra arm. His glands ached, making his neck feel swollen and sore. It seemed as though they were specifically reacting to the Omega’s presence in the room. Almost questioning Shiro’s sanity as to why he couldn’t just pounce and take what he wanted.

He didn’t want this.

It wasn’t _him_ that wanted this.

“Look, I am not one of you,” he said, looking the Omega in the eye. “I am not Galra, and I don’t want to have kittens. Or whatever it is you people have. Cubs? And I definitely don’t want to force you into something you don’t want either. Okay?”

The Omega looked at him for a long time before nodding. “Okay.”

He turned away, slinking back under his blanket.

Shiro sighed deeply. “But we can be friends. If you’d like.”

There was a slight movement underneath the blanket, and the Omega's face became visible once more. Shiro couldn't help but pause and look at him – the features of this particular Galra were very different to those of his fellows. They were finer, more _human_ , which made sense, considering the Omega's origins. Shiro had been trying to work out a way to ask him about that, but something told him it wasn't a good idea.

It was deeply personal, after all; and getting personal with this Galra was not something he wanted to do, for both their sakes.

“Friends?” The Omega repeated. Sometimes Shiro wondered if he was slow, or perhaps just starved for interaction. He suspected that most Omegas weren’t very well-socialized: there was a reason he had never seen one before, even despite having spent so much time on the ship among the aliens.

"You know, we can… Hang out. Talk. No touching," Shiro elaborated, gauging the depth of understanding in the Omega's eyes.

The creature seemed to hesitate before shrugging down his blanket.

“I’d like that,” he said. “I’ve never had a friend before.”

Shiro had suspected as much.

“Then we’ll be really good friends. Who happen to live together, is all.” _And happen to think that the other apparently smells like the most fuckable thing in the world._

He was getting a migraine.

“So, do you have a name?” Shiro asked, observing the Omega. The creature appeared saddened by the question, his ears drooping, and Shiro was about to take it back–

“Omegas forsake their names when they are given to their Alpha. The Alpha can decide what it is,” he replied quietly.

Shiro sighed, frustrated. This society wasn’t making it any easier on him, was it?

"But I did have a human name too if that's–,"

“That’s perfect!”

Shiro wanted to cling to that. _Human name_. He hadn’t heard a human name in months. At least chances were he wouldn’t screw up pronouncing that one.

“My father called me Keith,” the Omega said, enunciating the word carefully, apparently not used to it. Shiro relaxed a little as he took it in. Keith. He didn’t know if the Omega _looked_ like a Keith, but at this point, Shiro was going to grab onto this tiny sliver of familiarity and hold on. Keith was almost human. And almost Galra. But mostly almost human. It was easier to think of him in that way.

“Keith, then,” Shiro said. “I’m Shiro.”

“I am to call you Alpha,” the Omega said, bowing his head.

"Shiro," the human said insistently. "You will call me by my name if we're to be friends."

"Shi-ro," Keith repeated, trying it out on his tongue. He looked at the man hesitantly before straightening up a little so that his entire face was visible. "That's a lovely name. Is it strange to say that? That you have a nice name? I'm not very well-educated on how compliments work, and maybe they're different for humans and–,"

"Hey, slow down, buddy," Shiro laughed.

Keith looked down at his blanket.

"It's okay to say that. And thank you. Thank you for saying that my name is lovely. As a matter of fact, I think your name is nice too. It suits you. You look like a Keith.”

“I… look like a Galra,” the Omega replied, tentatively, as if he thought he was insulting Shiro by pointing out that fact. The man only laughed harder.

“You’re making fun of me,” Keith concluded. Shiro sobered up instantly, shaking his head even as stray chuckles escaped him.

“I’m not. I think it’s sweet, the way you are. You’re much more… innocent than the others.”

"I was raised to be innocent," the Galra said. "I'm untouched. It is the custom among my people for Omegas to be intact until their mating."

Shiro sighed deeply. The Galra were looking less and less like aliens and more and more like some creepy religious cult. Which, now that he thought about it, they probably were – with Zarkon being their lord and god.

"That's not what I meant," he said. "I meant that you hadn't done anything horrible, you hadn't pillaged and killed and stolen, as your people have."

Keith looked away.

“You don’t seem very fond of the Galra.”

“They made me fight in the arena. They kidnapped my friends. They ripped off my arm and experimented on me, turning me into some sort of Frankenstein monster.”

“Franken… stein?” Keith asked, frowning.

“Never mind,” Shiro said quickly. “The point is, I have enough reasons not to like the Galra.”

"I suppose not," Keith said with a sigh. He leaned back against the wall. His sheer robe fell open, exposing a delicate collarbone. Shiro found himself staring.

“I sometimes hate them too.”

Surprise startled him out of his ogling, and Shiro’s eyes found Keith’s.

“I sometimes wish my father had taken me back to Terra.”

“You mean the Earth?” Shiro asked, frowning.

“Earth?”

“I assume we’re talking about the same planet. Earth, Terra, the Milky Way, the Solar System?” Shiro offered. The Omega looked at him blankly.

"Uh… probably. Those who educated me made it a point not to tell me much about it. So that I wouldn't long for it," he explained. His eyes narrowed as he observed Shiro's face as if trying to pick out every small nuance of his expressions and catalog it. “Do you long for it, Shiro?”

"For Earth?" Shiro asked. The Omega nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. There are so many things that I miss about Earth; I don't even know where to begin."

Silence passed between them.

“I have never known a planet,” Keith ventured.

Shiro looked at him inquisitively.

The Galra shrugged. “I was born on this ship. I never went anywhere.”

“You have never been off this ship?” Shiro asked, mortified.

The Galra nodded. "This is where I was born, and this is where I will probably die," he said. His voice wasn't resigned, nor was it bitter. He was just stating a fact of life.

“Haven’t you ever… thought of exploring?” Shiro asked carefully.

The Galra looked at him with a sad smile on his face. “I’ve thought of it, sure. But Omegas can’t even leave their Alphas’ domains, let alone get on a ship and just… leave.”

“Well, I’ve always wanted to be an explorer,” Shiro said with a sigh, leaning back against the wall. “That’s how I got into this mess in the first place.”

“Mess?” The Omega cocked his head to the side, looking more like a curious puppy than a kitten now.

Shiro chuckled. “Me. Being here.”

“But you’re the Champion! You’ve got a lot going for you. They gave you _me_ , and you’re not even Galra,” Keith said, looking at Shiro with blind, unadulterated reverence. The man shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny. “I mean, _granted_ , I’m a runt, I’m not even… a proper Omega, but still–,”

“I think you’re the best Galra I have ever met,” Shiro cut him off.

Keith just gaped at him.

“What? No, really. You’re the only Galra so far who hasn’t tried to kill me or experiment on me in some capacity. That makes you the best of them… _you_ , in my book.”

There was a moment of silence.

“You’re a strange one, Shiro,” Keith said. The man just grinned at him.

“Tip of the iceberg.”

“Tip of the… what?”

_Oh, boy._

* * *

For a while, they seemed to get along. It wasn’t like they were _chummy_ , by any means; but Shiro found himself growing increasingly more comfortable with Keith’s presence. The Omega never left the room; instead, he waited anxiously for Shiro’s return from every single match on the arena. When Shiro stumbled in, tired and riled up; the blood of various colors, depending on which species he'd fought that night soaking his clothes, Keith would be there to tend to him as much as he could. He would dress Shiro's wounds and call the Druid if need be. He would purr Shiro to sleep, his head perched on the side of Shiro's bed. He would talk him down and hear him out.

Shiro had grown accustomed to his scent – it was no longer the sharp, addictive smell that made him feel like he was about to _attackripkill_. Instead, it was a comforting, almost placating kind of smell, like clean sheets or a rainy afternoon.

He had even gotten used to being touched by the Omega – nothing sexual, of course, as neither one of them wanted to venture into that realm of their relationship. Shiro was grateful for that, even though the tension between them was almost palpable. He could ignore that, for the most part. Keith seemed to be pretty good at ignoring it too. A pat on the back, a brush of fingers on the skin when he dressed his injuries. Sometimes, Shiro would venture out and scratch behind Keith's ears, just like he would do to a cat. The Omega seemed ambivalent about that: he loved it, purring and relaxing into the touch; but at the same time resented Shiro for incapacitating him so easily when he wanted to.

They should have known that this comfort wouldn’t last. Nothing good ever did.

The night everything changed, Shiro returned from yet another battle, covered in blood (not his own) and very frustrated. Zarkon had watched the fight, and Shiro had made it a point to growl and snap in his general direction as he’d gone about tearing his opponent limb from limb – a cumbersome task, considering the creature had ten pairs of those.

The moment he set foot in the room and the door whooshed closed behind him, the lock clicking into place, Shiro's entire world spun off its axis.

_Desire._

A burning feeling, a sensation of electricity shooting through his body, in his blood, in his bones, every single cell in his body screaming for him to lunge for the Omega in the corner of the room. Before he knew it, he was there, right by Keith’s side, sniffing at his neck and tugging on his flimsy clothing to get a better whiff.

The Omega’s weak, shaking pushed against his chest and he sobered up for a split second, before crowding him once more.

“S-Shiro, please!”

His brain was misfiring – his body was experiencing something it had never gone through before; in the back of his head, he was screaming at himself to stop, but he couldn’t, not when the Omega was right _there_ , his scent beckoning him, urging him to dig in.

Keith was wrestling with him feebly, trying to get Shiro off himself, but Shiro was the Champion for a reason – he was too strong for the Omega to handle, too strong to be forcibly removed from him.

“Mine,” he breathed, his voice not sounding like his own even to his ears.

“Shiro, no!”

There was a flash of silver and Shiro found himself grasping at his nose, howling in pain. Blinded for a moment, he stumbled back. His eyes watered from the sheer surprise of the sudden pain. He was bleeding, there was red on his hands, on his face – and on the knife Keith had in his hand. The Omega was staring at him, panting heavily. Then he dropped the blade, his trembling fingers limp.

The pain had sobered Shiro up some. He threw himself across the room, his back against the door, as he looked at Keith with wide eyes, his hand on his nose, trying to stop the bleeding in vain.

“What’s… why do you…” He couldn’t find the words. All he knew was that Keith was staring at him, wide-eyed and completely terrified. He was shaking up to the very tips of his ears, his knees weak as he slid down the opposite wall.

Shiro felt like throwing himself into said wall, head-first.

_You lost control._

Keith’s breathing was uneven, sobs interspersing every inhale and exhale.

_You are a monster._

“I’m in heat,” the Omega breathed, his entire body shaking. Shiro's eyes met his, and he couldn't do anything but gape at Keith whose body collapsed onto itself, falling to the floor in a sobbing, shaking heap.

“I’m in heat, Shiro.”

* * *

Shiro couldn’t take it anymore – except he was; painfully, patiently, he was taking it – the horrible sound of Keith whimpering in the corner of the room, the smell of his painful arousal, the heat that radiated off him in waves.

His entire being was screaming out at him just to stalk over and _take_ , to grant the wish of Keith’s Omega body, consequences be damned. He knew Keith wouldn’t put up any more of a fight. He was weak as a kitten and too far gone, too instinctive at this point to tell Shiro no.

The thought sickened him.

He sat in the opposite corner, his human hand plastered over his face, to at least block out some of the smell. It was all in vain, though, as Keith’s scent only grew stronger, and Shiro felt his neck swell up, the glands overproducing _something_ , something that made him feel like even more of an animal than the Galra had made him into.

Fuck, this was horrible. This was so wrong. The siren call of the instincts that didn’t even belong in his body was so hard to resist.

Keith’s whimpers, along with his scent, only increased with every passing hour. Soon enough, the Omega was unraveling the blanket around himself, and huddling in the corner completely bare, the fine hair on his body standing on end. His ears were drooping down, and the shivering, fuck, the shivering, was so bad that Shiro thought he was going to start rocking the ship with it.

“H-hurts…”

Shiro tried to ignore him and focus on other things. How he would one day conjure up a plan and escape this place. How one day he would return to Earth and probably never get off the ground again. His piloting days were going to be over the moment his feet touched the ground. He didn’t know if he hated it or was looking forward to it – either way, he wanted to see it happen. One day, he would just be Shiro again, and not The Champion, a title he had earned through nothing short of murder. He would be among human beings again, and not stuck in a cell with an alien whose sweet, sweet scent beckoned him, made him _yearn–_

Fuck. He was thinking about it again.

Distraction proved useless, and Shiro found himself thinking a fight right now wouldn’t be the worst thing in the universe. At least it would allow him some form of physical release. For the animal inside of him that wanted to grab Keith, press him against the wall or bend him over the cot, and–

Shit.

He hated himself so much. Keith was his _friend_. His only friend in this place. Yes, he was one of them, and the possibility of him turning on Shiro wasn’t entirely an ungrounded fear, but at least, he was good conversation.

And he was cuddly. Well, Shiro _assumed_ he was, but he had never tried because touching Keith had been out of the question from day one.

Keith was cute, too, Shiro supposed; for a Galra, at least. He was small and skinny, unlike the rest, but that may have been what made him more appealing to Shiro, who was not used to the towering height of the Galra. That and the fact that he was smart, quick on his feet, and _nice_ , overall, with a biting sense of humor to supplement his cat like appearance. Honestly, Keith wasn't too bad, as far as the Galra went.

And God, he _smelled_ so _good_ –

_Shiro. No. Focus._

“S-Shiro?”

The man ignored the quiet whimper, trying to think carefully about everything but the deliciously-smelling piece of _ass–_

A person. Keith was a person.

Galra or not, Omega or not, Keith was a living, breathing being, and Shiro had no right to touch him no matter how much his conflicted, confused, animalistic side wanted him to.

He didn’t know how many hours he spent just lying there, on his cot, his stomach churning with desire and his own horrification at the idea. The smell only intensified and with it, so did Keith’s pitiful little whimpers, more like mewls now. The scent of the Omega in heat was so potent that Shiro buried his face in his pillow until he could no longer breathe and had to give up the idea. It took all his willpower not to glance over at Keith at every little shift, every whimper, every small sigh and feeble call of his name.

That night, when he was called for a fight, he saw the knowing looks the guards shot him, sneering and whispering among themselves. He nearly went berserk when one of them called Keith a little _bitch_ – it took three others to get Shiro away from the perpetrator. That only made them smugger – he was territorial and proprietary, and it seemed as though that was the effect the Druids had desired.

In the arena, he let loose.

If anyone asked him later whether he remembered anything about his fights, he would just look at them blankly. The state of insanity that had taken over him when he had overheard the guards talking won over his rational mind and all he knew was blood, bone, _carnage_. The crowd went wild every time he snapped a neck, severed a carotid, tore away a limb. He growled and thrashed and removed hearts, livers, other organs which had no name in human language.

He was a _monster._

And he loved it.

He punched his fist in the air and let out victorious roars, egging the audience on to enjoy, to indulge, to celebrate the horrific massacre. He felt Zarkon's eyes on him, and he was _proud_ , proud to serve at the pleasure of the Emperor, proud to prove to him that he deserved the whimpering mess of an Omega in his room.

He felt like a conductor, leading a cacophonous orchestra – the audience followed his lead, cheering, thirsting for more.

It wasn’t until they ran out of battle-ready prisoners that his job was done. He stood in the middle of the arena, all eyes on him, his chest heaving with exhilarated gasps. Zarkon’s gaze felt hot on his face, and he snapped his teeth up at the Emperor in defiance, earning himself a loud roar of laughter from the crowd.

When the guards came to take him back to his cell, they did not drag him. Instead, they seemed to almost cower at his feet, seeming somehow smaller than him even though he knew they were several heads taller. They did not grab him – they _escorted_ him, following his footsteps back to his cell. The sentries, being robots, were still the same, but the live ones, the Galra ones, they looked at him with undisguised fascination.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was just an experiment – a near-failed one, at that. But right then, all he wanted to know was that he was headed back for his cell, where another kind of feast awaited – one involving him and a pretty little kitten named Keith.

The door opened, and he was hit with a gust of the Omega’s scent. It made him almost weak at the knees, but he kept his composure long enough to snap at the guards and make them back out of the cell quickly. The door hissed to a close, and then all the sound in the room was just Keith’s pathetic whimpering.

The Omega looked like shit. Shiro’s absence and _piety_ , for the lack of a better word, had left him incredibly worn out. It appeared to the Champion that Keith had even managed to lose weight, somehow, within a single day.

That didn’t make him any less appealing. If anything, Shiro wanted him _more_ now.

Keith looked up when Shiro walked in, near-blind with the heat, his eyes glazed over. It seemed as though the only way he could tell that Shiro was even there was by his–

"You smell… so good," the Omega breathed, attempting to push himself up off the floor where he had been huddled in the corner, on his small mattress and his dingy little blanket. His arms gave out from under him and he collapsed, panting hard. He was bare but for the sheet which was dangerously threatening to expose more of him than Shiro could handle right now.

The Alpha tried to find it within himself to stop and not approach Keith. He hung back, circling his cot, and to the sink, to wash the blood and grime off his skin. His every instinct, though, called for him to take the bloodlust he had experienced in the arena, and turn it into a different kind of lust – to grab Keith and show him what having an Alpha really meant.

As if he really knew that himself.

The rational part of him was terrified; the part that was just Shiro, not a captive, not a Champion, and definitely not an Alpha. But Shiro’s blood sang, urging him to take _just one more step closer._

“Shiro–,”

“Boy, am I tired,” the Alpha said loudly, throwing himself down onto the cot without even toweling off. He was pretty sure he still had some dirt and blood left on him, but he was too on edge to really care. The smell of blood, perhaps, would help him dull his senses.

“Shiro, please–,”

“It was a long day. Lots of matches.”

“ _Shiro_... C'mon–,"

“Keith." The warning tone of Shiro's voice made the Omega freeze; one hand stretched out in a gesture of supplication. Their eyes met, and for a moment, Shiro almost wavered. “Don't… make this more complicated than it has to be."

Keith let out a strangled groan.

“I’m _burning_ , Shiro!” He whispered, his entire body covered with sweat and slick. “I’m burning on the inside! I need you, I need–,”

“You need rest,” Shiro said, his face a mask of resolve, even though his self-control was slipping. Suddenly, the next day on the arena couldn’t come any sooner.

“No,” Keith said through gritted teeth, staggering to his feet. Shiro watched with wide eyes as the sheet slipped from his body, leaving him completely bare and exposed for Shiro to look at. He knew that he was supposed to look away, to pretend that he had at least some form of humanity left in him, some _decorum_ , for crying out loud.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off Keith.

The Galra took a step forward, his eyes burning as he looked at Shiro with trepidation.

“Don’t move,” Shiro said, his voice hoarse.

Keith ignored his order, taking another step. The room seemed way too small for the two of them now. "Shiro, please," Keith repeated. His ears were flat against his head, and his purplish skin was raised in goosebumps.

“Please, Shiro.”

“Stay away from me,” Shiro said wearily, jumping off the cot and pressing his back against the closed door.

“I _can’t._ It’s… the heat, it’s making me _want_ things–,”

“You don’t really want me, remember?” Shiro said harshly, pointing to the wound on the bridge of his nose. “You made it clear.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith murmured, slinking closer. The room got smaller still.

“Keith, this isn’t you talking.”

“It _is_ me, Shiro,” the Omega said, now just an arm’s length away. His scent was suffocating Shiro, making his knees weak and his resolve even weaker. “Look at me, Shiro. I’m burning for _you_.”

“You will regret this, Keith. If I do this to you, you will regret it.”

“No, Shiro,” Keith said harshly, reaching out to touch the Alpha who smacked his hand away roughly with his metal one. The Omega _pouted_ , of all things, making Shiro feel like the weakest man alive.

“You don’t want to do this because _you_ will regret it,” Keith said accusingly, his tone more even, angrier now. “You don’t want to do it this because you’re so damn _noble_ and–,”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Shiro said quietly. “You have no idea who I am, what I do out there–,”

“You’re a fucking _killer_ , Shiro,” Keith cut him off, making him stare. “You’re just like the rest of the Galra. You _smell_ like one. You _act_ like one. And I’m pretty sure you will _fuck_ like one–,”

“Shut up!”

In the blink of an eye, Keith found himself pressed into the wall with Shiro’s human hand wrapped around his throat. It wasn’t as strong or advanced as his prosthetic, no; but it was strong enough to make him choke on the words that hadn’t escaped his throat. Enough to make him feel strangely light-headed.

Enough to make him want _more_.

Shiro felt the shift in atmosphere from resentment to anger to something else. Their faces were barely an inch apart, and God, did Keith smell good.

“You want it,” Keith whispered, attempting to press himself against Shiro’s body. He whined in frustration when he fell a couple of fractions short. “Admit that you want it. You want _me_.”

Even his breath smelled intoxicating to Shiro. The Alpha's every muscle wanted him to move – to throw Keith onto the cot, to bend him over, hell, just to topple him to the floor and take him on all fours like the Omega he was.

Horrified at his own thoughts, Shiro tried not to breathe in too much.

“You want me. And I want you,” Keith said slowly, licking his lips as he gazed at Shiro hungrily. “What’s the problem, Alpha?”

Shiro didn’t register the moment when Keith’s lips landed on his. The kiss was sloppy, strange, with the feeling of Keith’s sharp fangs against his tongue, the weird angle of their faces, the difference in their build.

But it was _good_.

Shiro pulled back, panting.

“Keith, please… don’t make me.”

“But y-you didn’t want me to–,”

“I was _scared_ , Shiro. You threw yourself at me,” Keith whispered, eyeing the taller man intently. Shiro’s breath caught in his chest at the intensity of it. “My first heat, the first time I ever felt like this and you… I was terrified.”

“You’re still in your first heat,” Shiro pointed out, his mouth dry. He licked his lips, eyes still trained on Keith’s face as it contorted painfully. “Aren’t you afraid?”

Keith gave him a long look. Shiro felt like the Galra was deconstructing his entire being with that one simple, heated gaze.

“Not if I have the Champion by my side,” the Omega whispered, dragging himself up into a sitting position. Shiro could tell that it was difficult for him, that every movement brought agony.

He had no idea just how bad it was, but given that Keith, who was one of the toughest persons Shiro had ever known, was practically begging for something he was bound to regret later… It was bad.

“Please, Keith, you’re not yourself,” Shiro managed to squeeze out. Frustrated, the Galra growled at him, lunging to straddle, but Shiro was too fast for someone as pained as Keith was.

The Omega hit the ground harder than Shiro had anticipated, bruising his chin on the floor. Darkened eyes, filled with longing, looked up at Shiro.

“Shiro…”

“I will die if you don’t do it.”

“What?” Shiro’s eyes widened as he exhaled the question.

“I will die, Shiro,” Keith breathed, sliding against him. Shiro could feel the heat radiating off him – he was burning up, quite literally. Sweat slid down his skin in rivulets, making the purple of it shine. “I will burn on the inside if you don’t give me what I need.”

“Keith, please, you–,”

“Don’t you want me to live?”

The scent was getting to him.

Focus, Shiro. Focus. He tried to draw his eyes away from one particular drop of sweat on Keith's neck, but he couldn't, not entirely. He hated being this animal, even in the face of life-and-death matters, this new… Attachment to his body made him into a monster.

“I’m an Omega, and you are my Master. Nobody else will touch me because I am defective,” Keith said quietly, his dark eyes pinning Shiro down. “My heat will take over, I will lose myself in it, and after several days, I will die without release.”

“What kind of screwed up–,”

“Welcome to my world,” Keith hissed, grabbing Shiro tighter by the front of his shirt. Shiro’s heart stilled in his chest at the sudden aggressiveness of it. He had to admit that it was also kind of (incredibly) hot.

“I want you to _fuck_ me and help me get the hell out of here, Shiro! You and me, we’re leaving this place, and I’m _not_ doing it as a corpse out the airlock.”

Shiro looked at Keith with shocked eyes, his mouth open – but no sound came out. He had really had no idea such thoughts had been brewing in Keith’s head.

“I don’t want to die,” Keith whispered, licking his dry lips as he stared at Shiro’s neck, his eyes skimming over the source of Shiro’s scent. “Not before I take revenge on those who did this to me.” 

Their eyes met.

“Those… who did this to _you_ , Shiro.”

Shiro had no idea which one of them did it. Suddenly, though, all reason, all _humanity_ was gone. Everything he had thought and prided himself on, his iron-clad self-control, _patience yields focus_ , all of it was gone.

He crashed Keith against the wall, his hands on the Omega’s hips, lifting him up.

Galra lips tasted just like human lips. They tasted like food, spit, and stomach acid.

But Keith… Keith himself tasted like something Shiro had never felt before. Even in his burning, feverish state, as he ripped Shiro’s clothing apart and threw himself at Shiro’s mercy, he tasted like hope.

* * *

For his age, Shiro was woefully inexperienced. Though he may have been a head taller and more muscular than anyone at the academy (at least, among the recent recruits and pilots), he had never had the time nor the desire to indulge in a little… extracurricular socializing.

Takashi Shirogane, the ace pilot of the garrison and the Champion of the Galra Empire, was a virgin.

Well, he _had been_ one, he supposed; not twenty minutes ago, he had been stripped of that, along with the remainder of his verbal coherence, by an equally virginal Omega Galra, who had pounced on him the moment he had succumbed to his cajoling.

He had no idea what the two of them had done – all he knew was that he felt like he had been reborn again, lying underneath the Omega who was straddling him, both of them out of breath and bearing idiotic smiles on their faces.

He had frankly panicked when he’d felt his cock do something it had never done before – and it took a lot of hushing and nervous giggling on Keith’s part to calm him down. They were knotted together.

It was weird.

And kind of great, too. The fact that this wasn’t the human way became a very faint, almost insignificant worry in his head.

He was going insane, and he had the Omega to thank for that.

Keith’s scent had abated a little – it was somewhat less aggressive, at least for now; and it smelled like _home_ to Shiro, who was proudly inspecting the bite mark he had left behind on the Omega’s neck.

 _Mine_.

“You marked your territory already,” Keith said, laughing breathlessly as he fell on top of Shiro, burying his face in the crook of the Alpha’s neck. Shiro felt himself relax even more when those clever lips touched his pulse point, making him preen.

“I know,” Shiro whispered, stroking Keith’s back with his human hand. He held the Omega as if he were made of glass – and for a moment there, when Keith had first impaled himself on Shiro’s length with a wanton, almost painful moan, Shiro had been afraid.

“Was it… good for you?” He asked carefully.

Keith’s back shuddered as he laughed at the question. “I wouldn’t have let you bite me if it wasn’t,” he mumbled, boneless and smiling.

Shiro felt the corners of his mouth turn upward. "I'm glad," he said quietly. "I've never… you know, done that before."

“I gathered,” Keith murmured, pushing himself up so that he could look Shiro in the face. “You’re going to get a lot of practice with me, then. An average heat lasts for four of your Earth days. Not sure about the whole… conversion thing. I asked one of the guards. The nicer one.”

Shiro whistled lowly, making Keith snicker.

“Think I’m going to wear you out, Champion?” He asked, his voice cloyingly sweet in its seductiveness. Shiro laughed – a little breathy, a little disbelieving. He still had no idea how he had ended up in this situation.

“Never,” Shiro replied, pressing a kiss to Keith’s cheek. “I have to stay on top of my game. For both our sakes.”

“What you need to do,” Keith said, dipping down to return the kiss – on Shiro’s lips, “is teach me how to fight.”

Shiro lifted an eyebrow.

“And don’t give me that look. I know it’s not an Omega’s business–,”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Shiro interjected quickly. Keith gave him a skeptical look.

“I come from a planet where tons of people are not allowed to do certain things because of their race or their gender or whatever it is that makes them different,” the Alpha explained.

Keith scrunched up his nose, shifting. Shiro’s length inside of him, stuck for the meantime – something that had freaked Shiro the _fuck_ out at first – moved, making both of them grunt. “So, Earth isn’t perfect, after all.”

“God, no,” Shiro said with a chuckle. “Hell, someone like me, with a prosthetic for an arm, would already be considered incapable of doing even the most basic of jobs. I’d be jobless, and probably homeless, too.”

“But you still want to go back.”

Shiro sighed. “It’s my home. And I have to warn them about Zarkon and his army. There’s good people down there too,” he said. “People who can change the world for the better.”

“Are you one of them?” Keith asked, cocking his head to the side. He shifted, making Shiro groan at the pull on his length.

"I'd like to think so," Shiro said. He looked up at the Omega and cupped his face tenderly. "I think I could start out small."

“With what?”

“I want to free the Omegas.”

Keith looked at him sideways and laughed breathily. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m serious.”

A moment passed between them. Keith looked at Shiro with surprise while the human just returned his gaze, stubborn and newly determined. The Galra sighed, leaning into Shiro’s touch woefully.

“Shiro, you can’t free the Omegas,” Keith said quietly.

“Why can’t I?”

"They'll die if they go into heat away from their Alphas. Once an Omega is bonded and bitten, they're bound to their Alpha for life. You know how I told you that I'd die without you… Taking care of me? Once you're bonded, you can only go to one person. Your Alpha. They're the only one who can make it better," Keith said.

Shiro’s eyes widened as his gaze slid to Keith’s neck and the new bite mark blooming there. “Keith–,”

“Don’t you dare,” Keith cut him off before he could say anything self-deprecating. “I wanted it. You’re the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me on this damn ship and I… I wanted it.”

His hesitant eyes met Shiro’s.

“…unless you didn’t want it,” he finished glumly. “I… should have said something before. I… I forced you into this.”

Shiro’s Galra hand came up and cupped Keith’s face. Whether their situation was a product of science, nature, Druid magic, or just plain manipulation, Shiro didn’t know – and somehow, it didn’t matter.

"I know we were thrust together here," he said quietly. "I was forced to do things, terrible things, to living creatures, just to survive. You were… Given to me as a prize. A _thing_ to play with and destroy if I wanted to. And even if… this means more than I thought it did, I know I won’t regret it.”

“How do you know?” Keith asked, his eyes flashing.

Something inside of Shiro unraveled.

“Because you too are the best thing that’s happened to me.”

They looked at each other for a long time before Keith sighed, placing his head on Shiro's broad chest. "I wish I were human," he said quietly. "I wish I could stop being an Omega. Change it. Become an Alpha. Or a Beta, or… not have any gender at all, just be me."

“Y’know,” Shiro said wryly, smiling up at the ceiling, “on Earth, people can change their gender. Well, you can have surgery, if you feel like you were born in the wrong body. It’s not too common, but it happens.”

Keith looked at him with interest.

“And some people don’t feel like they have a gender at all. And some are both,” Shiro added. “And for the most part, people accept that.”

Keith’s mouth twitched into a smile.

“Earth doesn’t sound too bad, after all.”

Shiro glanced at him, feeling slightly self-conscious. “Do you really hate being an Omega?” He asked. _My Omega?_

Keith shrugged. “I used to,” he said, playing with the fine hair around Shiro’s nipple. “I used to try to run away and throw myself out the airlock before they collared me to make me stop.”

Dread pooled in Shiro’s stomach. “You–,”

“I was young and impulsive and everything they hated Omegas to be,” Keith said. “I wasn’t… desirable.”

“You’re still young and impulsive,” Shiro reminded him gently. “You bonded yourself to a human with a fake arm and a fake set of… Alpha body parts.”

Keith snickered. “I suppose so. I think my gamble paid off, though.”

“I think it did, too,” Shiro replied. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’re very desirable.”

“You’re a charmer,” Keith said sarcastically. He sighed, glancing away for a moment. “Do you think your people would accept me? An Omega? An alien? I look different from you.”

Shiro didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe? Probably not? He couldn’t run the risk of Keith getting rounded up and taken to some lab to be experimented on.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he said finally. “Maybe we can just… find a cabin somewhere far away from civilization and just live together. You, me and… well, whoever comes out of those heats of yours.”

He knew he had to tread carefully since Keith didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic about the idea – and Shiro found himself to be not as opposed as he should have been. He’d always wanted a big family. The whole alien thing was a bit new to the plan, but he could work with it… if Keith was willing.

The Omega’s hand dropped to his flat stomach and he hummed thoughtfully. “That could be nice.”

Shiro smiled to himself. He knew that they weren’t entirely out of the woods. That Keith could fall pregnant during his next heat, or that he could even be pregnant now, but… for now, they were alone. Just the two of them, floating in space, not knowing which day would be their last.

“Shiro?”

He glanced down at Keith who had a small frown on his face. “What is it?”

“Why would we need to cross a bridge?”   

Shiro chuckled softly. As he stroked Keith’s hair, detangling it with his fingers, his alien hand did not feel alien at all. Somehow, this cell, the heat of Keith’s body, the intense, almost animalistic lovemaking, all of it made sense.

Perhaps he would learn to love it in time. And in even more time, perhaps he’d learn to love himself again.

* * *

There was a lot of blood. Too much, but Shiro looked past that even as his Omega slashed away at the Galra guards by the airlock, his face wild. The Galra who had thought Omegas were just there to _take_ it, to be meek and do what they were told to do… they couldn’t have been more wrong. With is fangs bared and his hair standing on end, Keith looked like a killing machine.

And Shiro couldn’t have been prouder of him.

The escape pod was just within reach; all fueled up with quintessence and ready to go, as soon as they could get to it and make sure they didn't get shot down.

The guard Keith had been fighting with fell to the floor, dead and spurting blood from their neck. The Omega looked up at Shiro with puppy eyes, as if seeking approval. Shiro chuckled.

“Good job, Keith, I– duck!”

Without even thinking, with implicit trust behind every inch of his movement, Keith dropped to the ground just as Shiro threw a guard's ax towards the Druid who had been trying to sneak up on Keith. The Druid's forehead was no match for it.

“Uh, thanks,” Keith said, brushing himself off quickly as he stood.

Shiro offered him a small smile. “C’mon, let’s go,” he said, nodding towards the pod.

Keith clambered inside after him, settling into the second pilot’s seat. He pressed his hand to the panel and it lit up, allowing Shiro to grab the controls, his Galra arm telling him what to do.

The vast darkness of space was a welcome change to the impersonal, cold metal of the ship. After months aboard the Galra station, Shiro found that he could finally breathe – more so when he saw the wonder on Keith’s face.

“The Earth awaits.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Leave us a comment, if you’d like? We’d really appreciate it. Once again, thank you to my wonderful artists and to the people who organized the Big Bang, I had a blast (pun absolutely intended).


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